


The art of falling out of love (and other lukewarm stories)

by glossary



Category: Bleach
Genre: Brothels, Character Study, Dubious Consent, F/F, Female Friendship, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Prostitution, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5275481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glossary/pseuds/glossary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s kind of hard to remember now, but Miwa used to be shy – and it was a painful sort of shyness, like a brittle-boned bird trying to fly away from the cage of her ribs. A human being is more than a knot of flesh and bone and, even after she died, there were strings tied to her heart. She couldn’t remember why she felt so small and nervous, and she didn’t understand why saying hello to her neighbours when she passed them on the street required her to gather courage the way a man dying of thirst in the desert hoards water, but it did. </p><p>Or: Miwa sleeps and dreams of before. (This is after.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The art of falling out of love (and other lukewarm stories)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Walk Two Lifetimes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5345492) by [Coolio101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coolio101/pseuds/Coolio101). 



> see the end for warnings, please. this hasn't been edited very much, i apologise.

It’s kind of hard to remember now, but Miwa used to be shy – and it was a painful sort of shyness, like a brittle-boned bird trying to fly away from the cage of her ribs. A human being is more than a knot of flesh and bone and, even after she died, there were strings tied to her heart. She couldn’t remember why she felt so small and nervous, and she didn’t understand why saying hello to her neighbours when she passed them on the street required her to gather courage the way a man dying of thirst in the desert hoards water, but it did.

Asami used to tease her about it, in that peculiar mix of tenderness and cruelty a place like Inuzuri fostered. “You lucked out,” she told Miwa. “That demure air sure made you, huh?” She was still new at the brothel back then, and she was trying to find her footing – hadn’t yet learned to look past her body when a man took it and made it his, the way the other girls had, and her subdued sadness contrasted so starkly with their careless good humour it made her uncomfortable.

But Asami always talked to her. Even on the worst days, when it felt like there were a hundred clients ready to crawl inside their most secrets and vulnerable pink corners, Asami talked to her.

“How d’you mean?” Miwa replied, bewildered.

“Because you’re cute,” Asami said.

That had startled her, Miwa recalled – a sharp ache like teeth biting into a plum, because Asami was beautiful in that faraway manner of things too lovely to be understood by a human being: like the sparkle of the sun on a still pond, or a tea leaf slowly staining warm water.

Asami cracked up. “You make the best faces,” she said airily, and petted Miwa’s hair – a there-and-gone caress that nonetheless lingered in Miwa’s mind, because it had been quite some time since someone had touched her so innocently. “But… I reckon you could think yourself unlucky too. You’d have less customers if you were ugly.”

“But I’d starve,” Miwa said.

She’d never forget the way Asami smiled sometimes, as if a pale secret was peeking out of her eyes. As if she was leaking hushed misery. “Quicker way to die, honey.”

* * *

Miwa looked about thirteen when she died, and she forgot too quickly to mind dates – and then it hadn’t mattered. She was all skinny ankles and hipbones, coltish legs and the wide eyes of a doe. Her hands were neither rough nor soft and she slept poorly on her own, those first days, as she learnt the price of kindness in what was to be her new home.

“I’ll let you in if you suck my cock,” a man said casually, all lean and lazy like he didn’t even care – but Miwa’s bird heart had tried to fly away again, a pull so hard it spread like the bloom of a bruise into her shoulders, dripped sick-hot onto her stomach.

“I―,” she tried to say. “I – no. No.”

His eyes had followed her as she stepped back, just like the fin of a shark in a murky sea. “If that’s what you want, darlin’.”

It was the worst feeling in the world, to realise one was utterly alone. Sometimes ghosts throbbed in her dreams, a shadow like a mother or a father or a sister, and she didn’t know if she wanted it so badly she was imagining it or if they were true memories – but the daydreams followed her into the waking world. That was how she knew she’d been young, later on, even though her face hadn’t changed and she still had the bones of a gazelle. Because she’d wanted better instead of being grateful it wasn’t worse.

Miwa tried stealing, but she wasn’t the best at it and lacked direction – had nobody to teach her but the fists of the wronged when she was too slow to run (because she inevitably got caught). She watched the groups of feral children crowding together, nipping and barking banter like cheap polish over steady love, and wanted so badly to belong with them… but she was clumsy with her words, as if her longing was a ribbon around her neck everyone could see, and it made them retreat. It seemed almost ridiculous, that one had to pretend to not want at all even in death, but then – people were people, alive or dead or halfway there.

There wasn’t much to do in Inuzuri except commit crimes. The gangs and yakuza groups dealt in drugs and fine silk, food and water, and only a tenth of their wealth trickled to Inuzuri’s residents – the rest were shipped off-district. Men came this far away from the Seireitei, the shining Shinigami city, to fuck women who couldn’t say no and to stab men who couldn’t defend themselves (sometimes it was the other way around, sometimes it was both) – but the positions of everyone were clear. Despite the misery of life being more or less uniform, Miwa found it amusing that the social pyramid retained the traditional rigidness.

Within this society, prostitutes were more or less at the bottom. Some of them were very powerful indeed, because they conquered their sweethearts until it wasn’t a matter of _if I come back_ but _when I return to you_. Most of them, however, were tired and hungry and charged extra for swallowing. There were stories of famous courtesans but all Miwa knew were those woman who untied their _obi_ so they could flash their bruised breasts on the street.

She hadn’t… thought about it. About doing it. Not even once, until Asami.

Like most Inuzuri brats, Miwa lived hand-to-mouth. Her existence within two weeks was not a surety – in fact the thread of her life often trembled when it got too cold or too hot or when there was someone with a dry knife who wanted to remedy that situation. These were her choices: join the yakuza (if they would have her), join a gang (if she survived it), join a group (if they would allow her) or die.

Asami walked to the market every two weeks with a bit of coin sewed to the inside of her sleeve and Miwa took to watching her. There were some vague ideas inside her head about stealing from her – those long limbs and plentiful breasts didn’t inspire fear into the hearts of men – but the war in Miwa was dying out. When everyone destroys merely to say alive it’s easy to notice a quitter, and Asami happened to turn her head and meet Miwa’s serene gaze, and a spark of pity was lit.

“Prostitutes never say no,” Asami said, because she thought she was so funny. “We’ll have you, if you ask.”

But there was only one person who Miwa wished would have her.

* * *

One of the lower-tier members of a small yakuza group was friends with one of Miwa’s senpai in the brothel. She was kind of funny looking, actually – a narrow face and a wide mouth that turned her positively fox-like, but her hands were slim and graceful and the curve of her bare neck (she wore her hair short like a man’s) was interesting in its perceived vulnerability. Miwa liked it when she came to visit because it usually meant she was there to pick up any rumours Mama-san had gathered, plucked artfully from the mouths of satisfied men, and they got to take a bit of a break.

Some of them need it more than others.

“So d’you think my fake orgasms are too fake?” Nonoko wanted to know. She had big eyes and big breasts and a nasty habit of stealing from her customers. Sometimes they beat the crap out of her, not even _playing_ – just dragged her into a room by the hair and would hit her until she quit screaming. Miwa hated being sent in to check if she was alive after they left.

Mihara ―Miwa wasn’t sure anyone knew her given name― was drinking someone’s leftover tea and choked. Risa leaned over the low table to pat her back, her fine brown hair swaying dreamily.

Reiko considered. “I guess it depends on what you’re ratin’.”

Nonoko started to frown. “What’s that mean?”

 “Like, are we talkin’ loudness or feeling here?” Reiko said seriously. Risa began to nod, solemn and attentive. “And what about – what’s it called – body speak?”

“Body language,” Asami supplied helpfully. Risa stopped nodding and looked away.

“Yeah, that shit. You writhin’ like you got an exorcism goin’ on or is it classy-like writhin’?”

“What’s it matter?” Mihara asked, frankly bewildered. “You think they care if we have a good time or not?”

Everyone laughed at that one. Even Miwa smiled.

“I got professional pride,” said Nonoko stiffly, but then Mama appeared, ushering in Reiko’s thief friend – Miwa thought her name was Suiren. Reiko moved aside so Suiren could sit at her side and they grinned at each other, same straightforward air about them, which perhaps helped Reiko hoard her pool of customers – middle-aged men who wanted a fuck and a cigarette and were content with Reiko’s plush thighs.

“Whatcha talkin’ about?” asked Suiren.

“Fake orgasms,” replied Reiko. Mama-san had placed herself by the window, smoking as usual, and she let out a bark of laughter, rough like sandpaper.

“Ain’t no other kind,” she said, and everyone laughed again – even Reiko’s friend Suiren, who couldn’t possibly understand. Her _obi_ was tightly tied, after all.

Those waves of resentment kept surprising her, and the worst was that Miwa knew it wasn’t subtle at all. Asami stared at her dilated pupils, her mouth twisted together with the beginnings of bitterness, and at dawn when they were free (because the night belonged to those with money) and they slid into the same _futon_ after cleaning themselves, Asami would put a hand over Miwa’s heart, her tired skin dotted with sweat like tiny dying stars, and say things like, “What’s this? If I lick my hand will I die poisoned from all the hate, Miwa-chan?”

She was thinking about Suiren that daybreak, as Asami shifted closer so they could share heat under the threadbare blanket – well, not about Suiren exactly, but about the story she’d shared. Mama-san said, “Ain’t no other kind,” and Nonoko said sullenly, “Well, there _could be_ if I sold love, proper-like,” and Risa had burst out laughing (a terrible sound to hear if there ever was one, with those ruined vocal cords), and then Reiko said, “You can’t sell love, and you can’t buy it. It runs away from you and that’s that, you dumb child.” And then Suiren piped up, “I got a good story. S’about a woman having sex for free, even.”

A murmur of agreement. The story was unimportant in the grand scheme of things, a lick of fun about a woman with lovely eyes and a melancholy mouth who bedded a hundred men in search of her true love, the one who would make her great (Miwa wondered if every version was so explicit about the _bedding_ bits). She kept on with it until one day she realised she was aging, there were lines around that pretty melancholy mouth – and they weren’t laughter lines because she wasn’t happy (Mihara said, “I’m sick of dick too, sister” and Nonoko shushed her).

Still, she would’ve insisted until her death if it wasn’t for her serving girl, who wasn’t a girl anymore but never mind: she’d watched over the woman since forever now and, impatient with her because she couldn’t figure it out, took the woman to bed and made her touch herself. “Don’t look at me,” Suiren said, mimicking the serving girl – her eyes were sorrowful. “Don’t be lookin’ at me, honey, you’ve got to look at yourself – plant your own garden and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. No man will be makin’ you great because queens rule themselves first, you hear me? So don’t look at me.”

With her eyes closed the woman fell in love – fell out of love with the idea of something savage and cruel who would remake her, and fell in love with herself and the mirror (and a little her serving girl but that was another story). That daybreak Asami and Miwa did it again, even though they hadn’t since Miwa had come to the brothel following the shadow of Asami’s star.

“A man shouldn’t be your first time,” Asami’d whispered in her ear. “A man will take everything else from you except this. I will keep it safe. It will be our secret.”

“All right,” Miwa had said, breathless and melting. That spark of excitement would take a long time to repeat itself, but she hadn’t known – had only been glad, back then, about the slow sticky kisses and Asami’s tired giggling.

That second time was different. It was so obvious they were dangerous and crumpling, like a house on fire, but it was also hard to mind it when Asami smiled so prettily and hardly ever cried, unlike everyone else. Asami who showed off her necklace of bruises unashamed, who pulled her hair away from her face so everyone could watch the scratches on her cheek, Asami who was never afraid of screaming when someone hurt her, as if she wanted them to look, to watch, to notice, _I’m here and you can’t guilt me into silence_ , and Miwa loved her, loved her, and it was the all-consuming love of a child that knew nothing else, Asami who was the morning star of her sky, the gleam of the sun on a still pond, a tea leaf staining warm water and sex the way it was supposed to be, surely – two people reaching out in the dark to promise the other they were not alone.

(But promises are not jails.)

After that second time Miwa stopped thinking about what her life had been like―if there had been parents, a sister or a brother or a dog, then she didn’t want to know it. Instead she buried herself intensely into the camaraderie of the brothel, the way Mama-san would smooth her hair when she found her wiping the floors, Nonoko painstakingly covering her bruises and how Mihara would howl the house down when some idiot tried to leave without paying, Reiko’s jokes which somehow could lit up the darkest night of the year and Risa banging pots together when she wanted to be heard, _look at me, look at me_ be quiet – she was already looking at herself, Miwa was, and what she saw was something different than the worst feeling in the world: she was not alone.

* * *

Asami cried rarely but she did cry. It was always because of a man.

Miwa wasn’t sure what he did – the fact he was dangerous was terribly obvious, nothing to blink at, and he wasn’t the only one to visit their brothel. But as far as she knew he didn’t belong to the yakuza or to a gang. Nonoko called those like him lone wolves and stayed away, which was oddly sobering because Nonoko begged for it unashamedly. Miwa didn’t know if she truly liked it or if she’d convinced herself her only chance at sanity was to like it, but whatever the reason the results were the same – seeing her step back when Asami led that man into her room made a chill run down Miwa’s back.

“I got brains,” Nonoko said, staring at Asami’s closed door with her eyes narrowed. “Fuckers like him don’t stop even when you got no blood left to bleed. Asami should say no.”

“What, so she can get shanked?” Mihara snapped, and Risa put a hand on her shoulder - Mihara’s shoulders tightened and then abruptly relaxed.

Mama-san exhaled a puff of smoke. “Off to work with you lot. You don’t get to say in this house ‘cause I got good in my heart, you hear me?”

They scattered obediently. Miwa looked over her shoulder because that would always be her way. She grew past everything but never let go.

Reiko was the one who explained it. “Sometimes you can’t say no,” she told Miwa as they helped Asami into bed. Her neck was so bruised and swollen Miwa kept checking she was still alive, still breathing – there were tears caught in Asami’s pretty dark lashes, like the swept of a fan. Miwa put a hand over the mark on Asami’s right hip, the firm grip of a man and its print – her fingers were too short to fill it, and that image (Miwa not enough to overcome him) would haunt her always. If someone asked her, fifty years later, _and how did you lose Asami?_ she would answer _my hands were not big enough_.

“We never can say no,” Miwa said, swallowing back her anguish. She got bad clients too, but most of them bruised her with their carelessness – liked the little girl look and wanted to take care of her, own her completely for a few hours. Asami’s client came around once a month and would only ever accept Asami – one time he waited two whole hours while Asami finished with a few yakuza goons spending their latest pay, and then went inside her room as soon as they left, crowing and cheering. She wondered if Asami’s client loved Asami – inasmuch as someone like him could love – but… Miwa didn’t think so.

Asami cried rarely, but she did cry.

“Not like that,” Reiko said, brushing back a lock of Asami’s dark hair. “I mean, she really can’t tell him no. Not because she’ll be on her ass on the street if she gets too choosy, but because he’ll shank her if she refuses him.”

“How d’you know?” Miwa whispered, afraid Asami would overhear despite her feverish state.

Reiko was quiet for a long moment, then she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her kimono. “Because, honey, he’s the one who took Risa’s voice.”

It wasn’t – really done. Talking about injuries.

Mostly it just _was_. A john got carried away while playing with you like you were a doll – so what? It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, and tears were meant for praying. Out of all of them the fiercest was surely Mihara, who was tall and broad-shouldered and who never hesitated to hit back if they overstepped her limits (eventually, she amassed customers who preferred her tendencies); while the most permissive was Nonoko, who wailed and cried and pleaded for it to stop – she got the run-of-the-mill crazies, the sort who would’ve beaten their wives and kicked their dogs, and the most fascinating thing about it was that they seemed to adore her despite everything. It hurt Miwa to watch. Reiko, of course, got the steadies, the ones who would only be rough if they had had a bad day and for all her luck Reiko knew how to take it.

Risa was rarely allowed alone into a room with an unknown customer. Everyone was afraid they’d kill her and nobody would know until it was too late to do anything; for all that, her repeats were the sweet sort, the ones who thought they fell in love with her calm smile and her subtle humour, and repeatedly tried to convince her to run away with them. The first time Miwa saw Risa reject one of her suitors, grinning like they were playing and shaking her head resolutely, she’d felt a bit faint.

“Oh,” Miwa said, and that was that.

What Mama-san always said was – “You gotta have something sweet to tide you over.” That was why she never made a ruckus when Asami and Miwa slept together, or when Mihara sometimes woke up the whole household laughing like a little hyena because she was playing charades with Risa again, and why Reiko’s friend Suiren was unfailingly welcome. You’ve got to have something sweet to tide you over, because life is a bitter ride and it will never get better. So braid your own way out of the tower, cook your own poisoned apples to fight back and prick your fingers with all the needles you need if you want to skip a bit of your life. Look at yourself (you are not alone) – there is someone who loves you and more, someone who wants you to love yourself, except―

Sometimes nothing is enough. That is life, also.

Asami killed herself once she was strong enough to walk. Just went out of the house with the coins sewed to the inside of her sleeve, and two days later they found her floating in the river. Before she left, that last time, she’d held Miwa’s hand and cried without hiding it, and Miwa’s grip was the tightest _ever_ because she could feel Asami drifting away: it was an ever-darkening sunset and slowly the sun on the still pond became a subtle shimmer, the tea leaf drifted into cold water and hardly any dye came out.

Miwa thought about saying _I love you_ but didn’t, because she didn’t love Asami the way Asami wanted to be loved – had outgrown her the way all children outgrow their favourite clothing: suddenly, with a prickling stretch of bone. She could not think of Asami as a blazing sun consuming her, a house on fire, when she knew how fragile the foundations were – when she knew herself to be the stronger one. It would have been a burden.

“You’re my favourite,” she said instead, and Asami laughed through the tears.

“Thank you,” she replied, and that was the last thing she ever said – but there was something like an apology in her eyes. At first Miwa thought it was because of what she was planning to do, and the way it would break Miwa’s heart, irrevocably – at first Miwa thought Asami regretted the pain she would put Miwa in. But a week after Asami’s body was discovered, Asami’s client dropped by and he looked straight at Miwa.

Asami had been sorry about Miwa’s pain, but not about the one her death would cause. And not sorry enough to stay.

* * *

Miwa fell in love with Hisana in memory – that is to say, the first time they met she was trying to catch her breath, trying to leave the room (in her head) where that man had broken her like a child grinding shards of glass under a heel. It felt like a dream, those cool hands and the steady voice, and so she didn’t put much of herself into it because dreams were for fools. But later on, Reiko said it had really happened, and she revisited the memory. Miwa didn’t think there had ever been someone as simply kind to her – not that she could recall. Hisana, who sometimes looked terribly melancholy but who always came back to laugh herself sick when Kaori told off Kazuki, who loved her sister with all the fierceness of a mother, who offered a helping hand to anyone who needed it.

_Hello, Miwa-chan… Won’t you look at me?_

Now that was the easiest thing Miwa had ever done.

Miwa decided she wouldn’t say anything almost before her heart finished settling around the tiny ember of a feeling. Hisana nurtured that spark thoughtlessly, effortlessly; taught her to read and to write, how the human body works (don’t look at me, look at yourself), showed Miwa how to be someone tangible and real and worth it, and once Miwa noticed the road existed she ran on her own. She just couldn’t help looking over her shoulder (it would always be her way).

Hisana was the kind of pretty that broke your heart – she would be chopping vegetables in the kitchen, or humming a song under her breath, or reading with her brow furrowed as if she was ready to take the knowledge _by force_ and it would hit Miwa like a sucker punch: those big glossy eyes, the curve of her cheekbone melting into the swell of her mouth, the dark hair resting over one of her slender shoulders like a sleeping snake. Miwa took to visiting Mama-san’s brothel often, to compose herself.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Nonoko said.

Mihara arched an eyebrow. “Who’s talking?”

To drive the point home, Risa brushed the back of her hand over Nonoko’s bruised face, who harrumphed impatiently.

“It’s different,” Nonoko insisted. “You don’t see me all lovesick-like, d’you? Look at her face. Bet you she hardly says a word in that place ‘cause she’s too nervous around the _Angel of Inuzuri_.” The words came out heavy with jealousy and a dash of contempt.

“Quit your bitchin’,” Mihara said. “We all miss Miwa-chan. Don’t give you right to throw a tantrum.”

“Fuck off,” said Nonoko. Reiko laughed.

“Thank you for always standing with me,” Miwa said, and it was meant to come out flat and sarcastic – she was daring to be a little bit of a smart-mouth, now, because it was the only way to survive in Hisana’s household, but – there was honest sweetness in the words, and Nonoko blinked back sudden tears as if they had surprised her too. Reiko just gathered her into her arms and hugged her, and then Risa was pulling Mihara’s sleeve so they could join, and Nonoko sniffled wetly as Mama-san put out her cigarette and crossed the room to pat their heads.

“We love,” Mama-san said. “Ain’t that nature?”

* * *

Miwa sleeps and dreams of before. (This is after.)

A girl is not made of love. A body is not only flesh and bone but it is not all heart either – there is enough thirst and hunger in her to drown the world. She remembers Reiko’s thief friend sharing words and myth, a coin for a story taken from the recently dead – _plant your own garden and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers_ , and Miwa does, Miwa does. She does not need Asami to build her up, turn her from a wooden girl into something true, and no man will ever invade the continents of her body again because angels have taught her to be perfect in her hard-edged glory, but―

Falling in love is like shooting a gun or ending a life. Over and done just that fast. Falling out is a long tricky climb upwards, bleeding hands and scratched knees and always the burning swell of love under her bones like a lava river. Miwa thinks she dislikes it intensely, that it fills her head with mind-numbing perfume and what will it change, anyway? Love comes and goes – and you think it will last forever but it won’t – love comes and goes and yet there are other bonds, like friendship and the sweetness of shared pain, pain recognised and suffered by others… those things lasted forever.

(Look at me. I’m not alone.)

This is how her life will go: there will be weddings ―Byakuya will convince Hisana, and they’ll live in a sun-draped home where spring will make love to the trees every season, but Kaori will laugh in Kazuki’s face and they will gift each other blades as if they were love letters― and there will be funerals. Renji will keep looking at Rukia who will never notice until he picks one side of the fence (friend or more). Miwa will visit Mama-san’s brothel, meet new girls lost in their afterlives and help them the best she is able, like Hisana helped her, to keep the good karma going. Maybe history will repeat and one of them will love her the way Miwa loves Hisana, the way strange night flowers adore the sun – shy and quiet about it, with no need involved.

Life will go (on) like―

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: all the main characters of this story are prostitutes (including the narrator, whose appearance is that of a thirteen year old girl). as such, there are some troubling approaches to sex and interpersonal relationships, dubious consent and allusions to violence. an original character commits suicide after suffering abuse. sexual favours are asked of a minor in exchange for protection. the overall tone is thoughtful and dark, but not hopeless. if you feel any of these things will trigger you please don’t read it.  
>    
> 1\. the quote _plant your own garden and decorate your soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers_ is, i'm pretty sure, by veronica a. shoffstal from her poem _after a while_.  
>  2\. miwa and reiko belong to Coolio101, from her story _walk two lifetimes_. miwa is an original character who is given the opportunity of changing her life by becoming hisana’s apprentice. i liked her as soon as she showed up, because her portrayal was startlingly stark – no sugar-coating there. then i became curious about what her life had been like, before meeting hisana. there is no excuse whatsoever for the shipping. none at all.  
>  3\. thank you very much for reading. please comment if you liked it, it would make me very happy.


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